Medicine Man

by Saffron A Kent

  I’ve never paid any attention to these HR things. I never had to. I have an impeccable record. Or had.

  “I don’t care about the lawsuit. How is she?”

  Greg sighs. “She’s the same.”

  I rub my forehead; I feel a headache coming on. I’m trying to remember if I have any sleeping pills lying around or if I’ll have to make a run to the drugstore.

  “I’m meeting her parents at the end of the week to discuss options.”

  My fingers halt their movements and a raging ache explodes in my skull. “Fuck options. There is no other option.”

  “It’s been almost two months. Her condition isn’t improving, you know that. And I’m sorry to say it’s not going to. It’s time to let her go. Her parents are tired, too. Their money is running out. The insurance is not gonna cover everything –”

  “I told you money is not a problem. I can write you a check right now.”

  “No, you won’t. I’ll personally make sure that your check doesn’t come through because you’ve lost your fucking mind.”

  “You’re not pulling the plug.” I almost crush the phone in my hand. “You’re not killing her.”

  “She’s dead already,” Greg snaps.

  I clench my eyes shut at the onslaught of pain. It should feel hot, this magnitude of pain. Red and pulsating. But in my experience, my pains have always had a chill to them. A sting. A frostiness.

  A partial numbness where all I can feel is the cold, the hard center of it, and nothing else.

  “Look,” Greg says. “You can’t even think about getting yourself involved with Claire any more than you already are, Simon. They’re going to see your money, your phone calls as a sign of guilt.”

  “I told you I don’t care about the lawsuit. Her parents can sue me for everything I am, I don’t care. I want Claire to come out of this alive. I fucked up, Greg. I shouldn’t have but I did. She can’t pay the price for it.”

  “Damn it,” he mutters. “Simon –”

  “Just give me more time.”

  He’s silent for a moment. Then, “I can give you two weeks.”

  My head drops in relief and I stare at the puddle of leaking water. “Two weeks. Okay. Yeah.”

  “But just that. No more. We’re pulling the plug after that.”

  I know that’s the right course. I’m aware that patients like Claire don’t come back from their coma. But I have some ideas. I have scheduled a phone call with a group working at Berkley. They work with ABI – Acute Brain Injury, and I’m going to present Claire’s case to them.

  “Okay,” I agree, letting it go.

  “Good. Now don’t call me, I’m busy entertaining and I suggest you do the same.”

  “Entertain, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  My lips pull into a smile. “With what? Sausages?”

  “Fuck you, man. I’ve got a good thing going here.”

  “Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “A drug rep.”

  “No kidding. You hate drug reps.”

  “This one’s got a great pair of legs.”

  I smirk. “Is she aware that you’re not going to buy whatever she’s selling?”

  “Hey, I’m open to whatever she’s selling. And as I said, you should do the same. Maybe that’ll take your mind off everything. Got any sexy doctors or drug reps or you know? Nurses?”

  At his question, my eyes go to the willow tree again. “No, and I’m not interested.”

  “Whatever. Though you do need to get laid. How long has it been, three months?”

  “Didn’t know you kept tabs on my sex life.”

  “Fuck you. Again. All right, I’m out.”

  We say our goodbyes and then, it’s silence. Or actually, not. Because I hear her.

  Do you have someone special, Dr. Blackwood?

  I hear the words as if she’s here, in this room. As if I brought her with me. Inside this shaky debris of a house.

  Willow Audrey Taylor, with her silver hair and blue eyes, and a fucking voice that sticks.

  I wonder what she’ll think of this. The dusty furniture, the leaking roof, broken stairs. The fact that this house is stuck in the past.

  You like fixing things, don’t you?

  I wonder if her pale skin will light up this house, like the moon does.

  He called me snow princess. He pulled me into this dark alley…

  He pushed me against the wall. His hands felt so big. Like they could do anything.

  He was dying to kiss me…

  Fucking liar. And fucking Lee Jordan.

  She’s such a liar. A liar who fights, every single second of every single day and doesn’t even know it.

  I scrub my hand across my face when I feel something stir inside my gut. Something warm and fucking wrong. Something that makes me think of her skin and soft hair.

  Her tiny body.

  Just then I hear a noise from upstairs, alerting me to the fact that I’m not alone within these walls. Reminding me that I need to get out of here.

  Shaking my head, I turn away from the window and walk out of the room. Walk out of this godforsaken place.

  I could take Greg’s advice because he’s right. It’s been three months since I had sex. Random hook-ups are not my style, though. I prefer to know the person and I prefer for them to know that it’s strictly physical and nothing else. I don’t have time for anything else. I fuck and that’s it. It’s biology.

  But for some elusive reason, I don’t want to fuck a nameless woman.

  I drive to my hotel, change into my gym clothes and hit the treadmill downstairs. I know even pills won’t do the trick.

  This is my only option. Work out till exhaustion. Till I overcome this strange, fucking warmth inside my body. The kind I’ve never felt before. The kind I don’t want to feel.

  Because I’m not like the man who killed my mother.

  I’m not my father.

  My one bad day turns into several bad days.

  Every day it’s a chore to wake up and face the routine. Every day I almost don’t go to breakfast or do my groups. Not to mention, my fucking meds are upping their game where the nausea is concerned. They tell me it’s psychological more than physiological. Meaning, it’s all in my head. And they can’t give me anti-emetics. Although, they finally give me saltines and ginger, probably to shut me up. So there’s that.

  Every day I want to break down and cry or burst through the front doors and run away, or just dissolve.

  But I don’t.

  Because maybe, just maybe, I’m a fighter. And there’s no shame in fighting. There’s honor.

  He told me that.

  Dr. Simon Blackwood.

  Simon.

  I know I said I won’t call him by his name but I’m breaking my promise. He’s not Dr. Blackwood to me, he’s Simon.

  The man who declared me a warrior. The man who makes me want to not die. The man who knows my secret.

  He’s the only one.

  I’ve never told this to anyone before. Not my mom. Hardly my doctors. But he knows. He knows about The Funeral Incident, where I felt such sharp jealousy, I was willing every bus, every cab, every car to come hit me on our way back home.

  A week ago I would’ve been terrified that he knew that, but not now. Now, I feel peace. Almost like happiness. I know he won’t use it against me. I believe that.

  I believe him.

  Over the next few days, I catch glimpses of him. In the hallways, the rec room, the TV room, on the grounds. But he’s always busy. He usually has papers in his hands. He barely stops to chat with people, barely mingles with them.

  Although sometimes he chats with Josie. Those times are hard. Harder than any dark days I’ve seen in the past.

  As much as I want to seek him out, I’m afraid that Beth might think there’s something between us. I’m afraid that she might take it the wrong way.

  She found me the
day after she saw us together. She asked me how I was doing and told me that the only thing that should matter to me was to get better. Go Outside with a better understanding of myself and the things I’m battling with.

  There was no mention of how she found us, and I decided maybe it’s all in my head, like a lot of other things. Maybe she didn’t even think there was something there.

  For all intents and purposes, I’m his patient and he’s my psychiatrist. Well, that is, in fact, the case.

  It isn’t Dr. Blackwood’s fault that his patient thinks about touching him day and night. It isn’t his fault that she dreams about him. She rubs her fingers together, trying to feel the fabric of his shirt, trying to remember the coiled strength of his chest. She wants to tell him all her secrets, show him all her dark places, and she isn’t even afraid to do that.

  It isn’t his fault that I’m slowly going insane and it has nothing to do with my illness, and everything to do with him, the man who’s supposed to fix me. My medicine man.

  In fact, I’m so insane that even though the sleep meds flow in my veins, I’ve gotten up every night this week in between hourly checks, and written his name on the rainy window: Medicine man.

  I write his name on the misty glass and watch as the droplets drag the lines of M and N down. Like a single teardrop. When I think about him, I don’t think about my illness or hear the noises of the ward or occasional whimpers of the patients. I don’t think about how sour my mouth has been all this week.

  “What are you thinking so hard about? God, you’re gonna burn holes through my book.”

  Penny’s voice gets me out of my trance.

  We’re at the breakfast table and when I come to, everything looks clear to me. Not dull or burning bright. Just right. The room, the people, the conversation. I’m sitting beside Renn, as usual. Vi and Penny are sitting on the opposite side. The air smells of eggs and strawberries.

  Focus.

  It’s back.

  I can focus on these things. I can focus on the trees outside, rather than my imploding thoughts. I can focus on the stray droplets clinging to the window, the damp grounds. It’s starting to rain. Things are gray and wet and swollen and promising.

  Oh my God, things are promising.

  “Forget it. She’s totally out of it. She probably didn’t even hear you,” Renn mutters, plucking a strawberry from my bowl and popping it in her mouth.

  I look at her. “Hey, stop eating my strawberries.”

  Her eyes widen in astonishment. Then she goes ahead and plucks another strawberry from my fruit bowl, all the while watching me.

  I glare at her and slide my tray out of her reach. “Get your own.”

  Her lips twitch and then she grins. “Oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “You’re back.” She claps her hands and gives me a side hug.

  Which obviously gets noticed by one of the techs, who reprimands her. Which obviously gives Renn a perfect excuse to flip the bird.

  I chuckle self-consciously. “I’ve always been here.”

  “Oh please. I was getting bored out of my mind. Penny was getting so fucking unbearable without your memory flash cards.”

  “I missed them. They help me keep sharp,” Penny reluctantly admits.

  I grin at her, feeling warm. I sometimes help her study at the library when she gets anxious about things. I didn’t know it meant so much to her.

  “We all thought you were gonna be the next Vi,” Renn continues, as usual being blunt.

  I glance at Vi, ready with an apology on behalf of Renn. But Vi’s grinning too. “Well, yeah, we did think that.”

  That just makes me laugh.

  Back on the Outside, my bad days would’ve horrified me, made me feel ashamed. But not here.

  Here, everyone has bad days.

  Like Penny, with her anxiety, who talks so fast that you can’t understand her. Usually, it takes a staff member to calm her down. And Vi, who goes quiet and won’t talk to you even if you begged. There was a day when she didn’t say a single word. And Renn, too. Sometimes she gets super snappy, almost as bad as Annie and you don’t wanna talk to her. It happens when she wants to purge but can’t.

  I look around the room and my gaze falls on a brunette who was admitted at the same time as me. In fact, I remember seeing the same fear, same pale complexion on her face as mine during those first few days, while we were trying to get adjusted to this new place, new meds, new rules, away from the only life we’ve known. Everyone looked like an enemy then. A threat. The Heartstone Effect.

  I smile at her when she catches my eyes. She looks much better now. I wonder if I look better to her as well.

  Roger and Annie are huddled in the corner talking like old friends; I think it’s a good day for them. A tech is trying to get a patient from The Batcave to eat something. A girl from my floor is simply staring down at her food, looking like she’s going to cry. I think she’s having a bad day.

  Everyone explodes or implodes in this place. That doesn’t mean they are crazy. Crazy is a useless word anyway.

  They are my friends and I missed them too.

  “So, what’d I miss?” I ask, and Renn launches into a lengthy summary of this week’s events.

  She tells me about all the gossip: A couple of nurses getting into an argument. Annie and Roger might be secretly dating each other. They looked pretty cozy in the TV room last night. Not to mention, right now. Snuggling without snuggling.

  “What? That’s completely wrong information. Lisa from 2F? She’s the one dating Roger. I saw them exchange looks the other day,” I point out.

  “The other day was last week. Things have changed around here.” Renn shrugs, and then she’s about to say something else, something super important if her wide eyes and eager expression are anything to go by, but things sort of come to a halt when someone walks in through the doors.

  A new guy.

  He’s not walking in, more like swaggering in, with long, lazy steps. His hands are shoved inside the pockets of his faded jeans as his eyes run across the space. People are watching him openly, but this guy doesn’t seem to care. In fact, when he makes eye contact with Roger, he tips his chin in greeting, but Roger only glares at him and looks away. The new guy doesn’t mind.

  “Who’s that?” I ask the table, still watching him as he gets into the breakfast line.

  The girl in front of him turns back and checks him out from top to bottom. I can’t see what his reaction is, but the lines of his shoulders say that he’s relaxed and unbothered.

  I guess everyone’s getting a little territorial with the arrival of the newcomer.

  “Oh, he’s the new guy, I think,” Penny answers, staring at him as well.

  “When’d he arrive?” I ask, thinking how come I missed that too.

  “Yesterday,” Vi murmurs.

  Once the guy’s done loading his breakfast on his tray, he makes his way to the empty tables, and decides on the one diagonal to us.

  Actually, it’s not as if he decides on it by discarding all the other options. It’s like this is the place he’s been wanting to sit in since he entered the dining hall. Which is curious because, well, he turned to face the room, his eyes going to the empty table he’s occupying right now, and then his eyes went to our table. Renn, specifically.

  It’s curious because Renn wasn’t even facing him. She was focused on stabbing her breakfast while this new guy kept his eyes on her, with a very tiny micro-smile as he walked to the chair and plopped down.

  “Do you know him?” I ask Renn.

  She stiffens, but questions innocently, “Who?”

  “You know who. Why’s he staring at you?”

  She plops a piece of fruit in her mouth and shrugs. “How do I know why he’s doing what he’s doing?”

  I frown at her, completely confused. “What?”

  “What?”

  I open my mouth and close it, and open it agai
n. “What’s going on? Why are you acting weird?”

  “I’m not acting weird.”

  Penny jumps in. “You so are.”

  Vi nods.

  “Shut up. I’m not.” Renn shifts in her seat, her eyes planted resolutely away from the new guy whose eyes are pinned firmly at her.

  “Why aren’t you looking back at him? He’s handsome.” I turn to the girls to get confirmation. “Right?”

  Penny nods. “I mean, yeah. If you’re into dark hair and dark eyes and good bone structure.”

  “Exactly.” I nod too. “He’s got good bone structure. You don’t get that often.”

  Good bone structure and dark hair remind me of someone but I squash that thought because this is about Renn, not me.

  “Stop it. I’m trying to eat my breakfast,” Renn snaps.

  “You hate your breakfast,” Vi offers.

  “Ohmigod, has the impossible happened?” Penny shuts her book and gives the conversation her full attention. “Are you not interested in a human of the opposite sex?”

  “Do you want me to slap you? ‘Cause I’m not afraid to slap you,” Renn mutters, darkly.

  “Hey, quit harassing her,” I tell the girls. “Renn doesn’t have to like every good-looking guy. She can hate some.”

  She sits back, waving her hand at me as if acknowledging my statement. “Thank you.”

  I smirk. “Yeah, so why do you hate him? Did he do something to you?” I sit up, suddenly getting serious. “Oh my God. What’d he do to you?”

  The three of us, apart from Renn, focus on the guy who’s sprawled in his seat, popping grapes, watching us, like we’re a movie or something. He’s still got that little smirk on his mouth. Grudgingly, I admit that he does have good bone structure. Not to mention his hair’s all messy, strands falling over his forehead in careless abandon.

  Even so, we’ll kick his ass if he did something to Renn.

  “No way! Renn! You know you can complain, right?” Penny’s all charged up now.

  “Yes, we can go right now,” I say, determined.

  I’m ready to stand when Renn almost shouts, “It’s nothing, you crazy idiots.” At last, she looks at the new guy. “Hey, asshole. Stop staring at me. I told you I’m not interested.”